Visitors to the Cíes Islands must count from this Easter with authorization to buy the ticket to the shipping company.

From this coming Easter will enter into force in new access system to the Natural Park of the Atlantic Islands. The Consellería de Medio Ambiente y Ordenación del Territorio will implement a new model of access to the Cíes Islands based on the issuance of a personalized authorization for each visitor. Each user will be the one who requests permission to access the archipelago through the reservation center authorized by the Agency for Technological Modernization of Galicia (Amtega), following the model already established in the Playa de las Catedrales.
Visitors may reserve through this website up to 25 places per request, which will include name, surname, identification document, gender and year of birth. The authorisations will be sent by e-mail to the applicant or downloaded from the website itself.
Once the visitor already has his authorization, personal and non-transferable and equipped with QR control codes, authorization number and first and last name, he can choose the shipping company with which he wants to travel to the Cíes. When disembarking on the islands, you must present your personalised authorisation at the dock itself, issued by the Xunta, since this is the only valid document for access to the archipelago.

Slots draw
Next week, the draw will be held to award the different slots in which each of the seven shipping companies authorized to dock on the islands can operate, all of them companies authorized by the Directorate General for Mobility and the Directorate General for Natural Heritage, responsible for controlling access to the natural space. Shipping companies may sell their tickets for transport to the islands, but to access the archipelago the visitor must have the authorization issued by the Xunta de Galicia, which is personal and non-transferable, and is equipped with QR control codes, an authorization number and their identification data. The operator will have the duty to verify the existence of this authorization before issuing the ticket and will not be able to transport Cíes passengers who lack it.

Conservation, security and access management
With the implementation of this new system the Xunta present avoids the possible over-selling of tickets by transport companies travelling to the archipelago. For reasons of conservation, management of public use and security, the number of frequencies for disembarkation of shipping lines will be limited, significantly reducing frequencies, without reducing the total number of visitors, which will be 2,000 on a regular line. This authorisation shall be valid for the following periods in 2018: Easter (i. e. 23 March to 1 April), the last three days of April and the public holidays in May, the summer period (June to September) and weekends and public holidays in October.
In the next few days, the shipping companies will receive at their registered offices the authorisations to disembark passengers, the duties they have with the protected area and the specific date of the draw, which will be held next week in the offices of the National Park and in which each company will be allocated a minimum schedule in the different morning and afternoon slots.